The 35 Percent
It’s tempting to reduce them to numbers. Polls say 41% of Americans approve of him. Around 90% of Republicans still back him. Nearly half the country would consider voting for him again. But none of that answers the question that haunts the rest of us:
Who are these people?
Because after everything—the lies, the cruelty, the chaos—they’re still there. They haven’t blinked. They haven’t flinched. They cheer louder. So, let’s stop looking at spreadsheets and look at them.
Yes, there are wealthy Trump supporters. Hedge fund guys. Real estate developers. Political operatives who know exactly what they’re doing. They don’t wear red hats. They wear smirks. For them, Trump is a blunt instrument: a man who'll cut their taxes, deregulate their industries, and distract the public while they rig the game. They don’t believe in Trumpism. They use it. They’re the same class of men who used to fund polite, golf-course Republicans. But they saw what was coming. They switched early. They like how Trump breaks things. They’re not stupid. They’re not brainwashed. They’re just cold-blooded.
Then there’s the group everyone talks about rural, white, non-college-educated voters who feel left behind. And not without reason. The factory’s gone. The unions are gone. The opioids stayed. For twenty years, Democrats promised retraining, and Republicans promised nothing—and both delivered the same thing: pain. Trump didn’t fix any of it. But he named it. He pointed a finger. At immigrants. At elites. At the “deep state.” And in doing so, he gave them what Washington never did: a sense of power. That power is emotional, not economic. Symbolic, not structural. But it feels real. He performs their rage on stage. He makes their enemies squirm. He gives them someone to blame. He doesn’t lift them up. He pushes others down—and that’s enough.
This group is older. Suburban. Churchgoing. They get most of their news from TV, and they never turned the channel after 9/11. Fox News has been feeding them fear for two decades—of crime, immigrants, atheists, and socialism. By the time Trump arrived, they were primed. These are the voters who still believe Obama was born in Kenya, that Antifa burned down their Applebee’s, and that Trump walks on water even as he drowns the country. Many are kind in person. Many are sincere. But they live in a closed-loop reality built by billionaires and fearmongers. They are victims of propaganda. But also, participants in it because the illusion feels safer than the truth.
And then the evangelicals. They know he’s a liar. They know he cheats. But they don’t care. Because he gave them what they wanted: power over your body, your books, your marriage, your kid’s school. These voters see Trump as God’s flawed vessel—a King Cyrus figure sent to smash secularism. They’ll quote scripture, but not Sermon on the Mount. They’ll cry about sin but look the other way when their guy boasts about assault. For them, politics is holy war. Trump is their sword. Morality is optional.
You’ve met the next group online. Or maybe in traffic. The chaos agents. Often younger, overwhelmingly male, sometimes college-educated but furious, nonetheless. Their political goal is to offend you. They don’t believe in policy. They believe in owning the libs. Their worldview is shaped by Reddit threads, YouTube rants, and Tucker Carlson monologues. They think Jan. 6 was a joke, covid was a scam, and climate change is “debatable.” They’re not searching for truth. They’re searching for reaction.
And finally, the most dangerous group of all: the ones who say nothing. Who shrug and say, “both sides.” Who vote Republican every time and pretend they don’t know what that means anymore. They don’t fly the flag, but they’re still in the parade. They tell themselves it’s about inflation. Or border control. Or freedom. But in the booth, they pull the lever for a man who mocks democracy, corrupts justice, and thrives on pain. And they know it. They just don’t care enough to stop it.
So how many are we talking about? The solid MAGA base—those who love Trump, no matter what—is maybe 25 to 30% of the electorate. Add the opportunists, the cowards, the billionaires playing populist cosplay, and the polite suburban “fiscal conservatives,” and you’re staring down 35 to 40% of the country.
But here’s the thing: they didn’t appear overnight.
They’ve always been with us. The resentful, the authoritarian-curious, the ones who think freedom means “mine, not yours.” The Confederates didn’t vanish. They just swapped flags. And we used to hold them in check—not perfectly, but enough. With law. With shame. With education. With norms. Through the slow, grinding expansion of rights and reason.
Then we looked away. Got complacent. Assumed they were losing. Assumed we’d won.
We hadn’t.
We let them take over by underestimating them. By assuming education would fix them. By thinking economics explained everything and character explained nothing. By letting bad actors—Murdoch, Zuckerberg, Koch—weaponize their fears and monetize their rage.
We let them take over because while we were busy governing, they were busy breaking. While we tried to persuade, they built alternative realities. While we assumed decency was the default, they tested exactly how far hate could go.
And when their guy came along—the bankrupt con man with the gold toilet and the grievance gospel—they knew exactly what he was. And they cheered.
The truth is: it wasn’t one man who broke the country. It was millions who wanted it broken.